


Filtered

by suitesamba



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Introspection, Love, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-27
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-17 06:08:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 13,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1376677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suitesamba/pseuds/suitesamba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short vignettes showing Sherlock and John through others' eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Greg Lestrade

**Author's Note:**

> This is really just a writing exercise for me, practice with characters I don't frequently write. Rating is for potential future chapters.
> 
> The first chapter is now available in Chinese here: [Filtered - Chapter 1](http://blog.naver.com/sherlator/220924523470)

Greg knows Sherlock is combustible. A supernova. Manic. Driven. The sharp arc of his ascent less steep than the plumb drop of his fall. He appears. He owns the room. Layers insult on injury. He gathers clues, reads them, unravels them, pieces them back together in a silken spider’s web of mad deduction.

He disappears when the case is solved, bored already, walking away straight and tall with collar turned up and hands in his pockets. Stepping off the curb and waving at a distant cab, which always comes for him, tugged forward by that magnetic pull Greg acknowledges, having been caught in it for so very long himself.

But one day, Sherlock is not alone. The presence of the other is so startling, so unexpected, that they fumble around him, let him slip under the rope, invade the crime scene, touch the victim. He is nobody and everything. Striking counterpart in all that he seems ordinary, orbiting around the thrall of Sherlock Holmes. 

Sherlock Holmes, egotistical, burning sun, body is transport, party of one. Tall, elegant, striking, commands your presence, the room, takes air and energy and light and life with him when he leaves. 

Sherlock Holmes is irrevocably altered. 

Greg sees John Watson for exactly what he is – Sherlock’s imaginary childhood friend, reborn in flesh and blood, grown up and gone to war, come home again.

Irrevocably altered as well.

For all that he fades into the scenery, loose clothing and dull colours, shadowed by mad brilliance, Greg knows not to underestimate John Watson.

He knows whose hand killed the cabbie.

Admires the hell out of the man for standing up to Mycroft Holmes.

Comes to regard him as a friend.

Sherlock is a prism, angles and refraction, and John pivots to catch the dancing colours.

Greg sees a new Sherlock through the filter of John’s eyes.


	2. Molly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly contemplates her part in Sherlock's plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Molly this time - told mainly from the cemetery.

Molly hopes that one day, John will forgive Sherlock.

She visits the cemetery when she needs to talk, sits cross-legged in front of the black tombstone, face to face with the farce that he is, that she helped to create. She isn’t sad, except that she misses him (of course she misses him), but misses him like one misses a child who’s gone off to Uni, like one misses a parent incarcerated, or a spouse serving in Afghanistan.

She tells him things. That she wishes she’d have been the one, that she’d have done anything for him. 

She _has_ done anything (everything) for him. Enough to lose her job, to face prison time. He knows this, assures her that Mycroft will take care of it, any of it, all of it.

She doesn’t recall him thanking her. He was all nerves, raw edges, a caged lion. Anxious. Peeking out the window, cap pulled low, hair pushed up in it, innocuous grey raincoat, twin to thousands of coats on London’s after-work throngs. Before he disappeared, at last, he admonished her. _You don’t tell John. Molly, promise me._

John may never forgive him.

She sees him here once, three months in.

Standing where she normally sits, leaning on a cane, hand fisted at his side.

She waits.

And John stands there. 

Minutes tick by – five minutes, ten. And still he’s there, and still he stands. She is near enough to note his posture, the stiffness of neck and shoulders, the way his right hand opens and closes. She is not near enough to hear what he says, if he speaks aloud at all. She feels voyeur enough, traitor enough, guilty enough, just being here in this place, witnessing his grief.

Grief.

Her sadness is not grief, and missing is not longing.

She is affected by Sherlock’s absence, she is party to it. 

But John is devastated. John is broken. Receding. Fading. Washed out colours, cane and limp, stoically standing at Sherlock’s feet for all the time it takes to gaze through granite and ask for a miracle.

And when John is gone, she sits on the ground, leans against the cold stone of betrayal. It is hard against her back, but she suffers it in silence.

Molly Hooper is a strong woman, much stronger than she seems. She is a smart woman, thoughtful and perceptive. She has known for some time that her affection, her admiration, her pining for Sherlock Holmes, for his brilliance, his beauty, his long-fingered touch, are pale fingers of flame, feeble, flickering, lost against the incandescent heat simmering between John and Sherlock.

She doesn’t know how John will forgive him.


	3. Mrs. Hudson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mrs. Hudson considers her boys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mrs. Hudson doesn't quite lend herself to metaphor. But I liked writing her all the same.

They’re her boys, her young men. She has a claim to them –a claim drawn in blood on her stairs, sealed by bullets in her walls.

She knows things about them they don’t know about each other. Obvious things, just there, on the surface, as obvious to her, anyway, as a streak on a mirror or a window blind askew and begging to be straightened. The look on John’s face when he watches Sherlock play. The way Sherlock slows down, turns, walks backward even, waiting for John to catch up.

Funny how they don’t see these things, considering Sherlock sees everything when he _wants_ to see it. No hiding secrets from Mr. Sherlock Holmes, is there? Exotic dancing indeed.

She forgives readily enough. Though it was so much easier, really, to open her arms to Sherlock, back from the dead, than to welcome John back to her table for tea. John, living right here, in London, but never stopping by, never even calling.

Oh – she understands, she supposes. Like losing a limb when Sherlock jumped, wasn’t it? No, not a limb. Like losing the very heart of him.

Poor, poor John.

She’s seen them together, John and Sherlock, and she’s seem them at odds. She doesn’t much like them with other people, though she supposes it’s none of her business, really, and won’t risk meddling again. Won’t risk setting Sherlock off into one of his moods, snapping at her and making her shake so badly she drops the tea tray.

Still, she’s the first to know when things change between them, well after Sherlock returns, well after Mary leaves. It began long before the wedding, though it was at the wedding that her Sherlock finally saw the light.

_You. It’s always you. John Watson. You keep me right._

Oh, the way he’d said those words. The way Mary had _looked_ at him.

He may just as well have sent a telegram declaring he was in love with the groom.

No, she thinks, she hadn’t been so very wrong that day John had first come here, had she? Assuming they’d only need the one bedroom?

And then – Sherlock had left the wedding early. What kind of person leaves a wedding _early_?

She thought it might just do him in – poor lad – because it was too late. His John was married now. His John had moved on. And everyone knows marriage changes _everything._

But nothing is ever simple with her boys. All that mess. Sherlock getting shot – all that time in hospital. John’s face at his bedside – if Sherlock had seen that desperate hope unmasked – they’d not have wasted all this time. All that back and forth. John leaving Mary. Going back to her. Sherlock leaving on some top-secret mission and then coming back again.

John finding out that darling baby girl wasn’t his at all.

Mary leaving the country, taking that little baby away.

John moving back to 221B, so silent and brooding, so broken and heartsick. Shouting at Sherlock – shouting at her, even. Taking back his room at the top of the stairs.

Those stairs – that’s how she knows things have changed for them now.

It’s not just that John is standing up straighter, that his hand has finally stopped shaking, that he smiles at her now and again when she walks in the room. And it’s not just that Sherlock hasn’t had a case in days but isn’t shooting holes in the wall, or playing the violin long into the night. Beautiful music it may be, but there’s only so much one can take of even the most gorgeous sunrise.

She hasn’t heard the violin past midnight for two weeks now.

But still, it’s the dust that tells the real story.

Within the space of two weeks, dust has settled, undisturbed, on the stairway leading to John’s room.

Only a ghost could climb those stairs without leaving footprints, and while she can’t keep the ghosts out of 221B, she knows John is flesh and blood and Sherlock can’t walk through walls.

They’ll tell her, in time. She’ll catch John wearing Sherlock’s dressing gown, or find them asleep on the sofa, Sherlock’s head in John’s lap. She’ll watch for signs, and watch that dust, and let them keep their secret a little while longer.


	4. Mummy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mummy remembers the child Sherlock was as she observes the man he ha become.

Mummy

Sherlock once told her how surprised John was that his parents were so ordinary. 

She likes John. She sees what he is for Sherlock. What he does for Sherlock. She likes him especially now that he’s more than a flat mate and a friend. 

And it’s fine that he thinks her ordinary, no matter he’s wrong.

An ordinary mother might look at her progeny as a grappling hook into the future. They’ll care for her as she ages, provide grandchildren so she can properly dote on them, carry forward the family name. 

But she’s pragmatic when it comes to her boys.

They’ve gone their own ways, as she knew they would. _Misfits_ , they’d said. _Independent,_ she’d countered. T hey’d find their place in this world, would learn to make sense from senility, order from chaos.

She doubts Sherlock is capable of understanding how she ached for him, doubts he’s ever even considered her feelings. A brilliant child, but a friendless child. A child so set apart from his peers that they simply weren’t peers at all. Both precious and precocious, her Sherlock, with those soulful eyes, and those innocent curls, that petulant voice, those questions. Always, always there were questions. 

And the trouble he’d get into. Because he had to know – how the antique family cuckoo clock worked, the one passed down the line all the way from her great-great-grandmother. Why some of the hyacinths were purple and others blue and others pink or white, if the bumblebees preferred one colour to another. How many times she’d found him surrounded by a tangle of springs and coils or garden dirt, uprooted plants, or little hills of tobacco carefully dumped from cigarettes. Sucking a stung finger (never coming to her for a kiss to make it better), or face pressed into the dirt, smudges on his nose, seeing her, gleeful. _Mummy, look!_

Her face softens at the memory of how she used to make him smile.

She knew before he did, of course. Mothers do. Even mothers who don’t phone their sons every week to complain about their aches and pains. Mothers who enjoy their own lives still, and don’t ride vicariously on the coattails of their children, famous though they be.

Because this time wasn’t really so different than the others. A little boy invisible against the wall, analyzing life from the sidelines. Seeing children at play but having absolutely no idea how to play with them. So intent on observing them, deducing them, while they formed their friendships, that by the time he’d charted the entire social structure of the primary playground, all the swings were taken.

And no matter that he sat against the wall, sitting on the same grass on which they played, he believed himself above it all, a supreme being looking down, not at his own creation, but at the creation of something less than he, finding the mistakes made by this other, the cracks in the foundation, the ill-fitting joints, the crumbling mortar. 

And so Sherlock smoothed his own cracks, repaired his own mortar, leveled his floors, mitered his joints, flawlessly constructed that impregnable fortress he calls a palace.

It’s amazing, she knows, that John found a chink in the plaster, or that Sherlock left a window cracked open. But once John was _in_ , so were his friends, his associates, a very small world for a man of his age and experience, but enough to give her Sherlock a taste, to make that beautiful brain of his finally - _finally_ \- acknowledge his heart. 

Her son is clothed in knowledge, armoured in intelligence, disguised in deductions. She loved him when he was a too-alert infant who would not close his eyes long enough to sleep, a serious six-year old highlighting errors in the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, a broken young man of twenty-five battling drug addiction. She loves him now that he finally loves another. And always, always, she’ll love John for loving Sherlock.


	5. Irene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Irene envies John Watson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh - Irene was difficult. So many ways to interpret her - and only one episode of material from which to draw. 
> 
> Sally next, I think.

Irene

He waltzed into her world wearing a cleric’s collar and a bleeding cut, a burgeoning bruise, on his perfectly formed cheek. Stripped of the collar, he was armed for battle, wielding his punishing intellect much as she wielded her whip. Both forced submission, both left scars.

Yet he didn’t beg for punishment, didn’t plead for her whip. The absolution he needed would never come from her hand.

No. Consulting detective Sherlock Holmes was not her usual fare.

Nor she his.

Naked though she was, sex was not her game. She found a new sort of fulfillment in sparring with him. Flirting with him. She found herself compromised by him, wanting from him what she wanted from no one. She punished herself those thoughts by using him, and he allowed it, and used her in turn.

Neither was immune to the allure of the other.

_I am Sherlocked._

One day, she knows, he’ll break John Watson’s code too.

How she envied him, from hour one, for being the one to add that splash of colour to Sherlock’s disguise. A blow, a punishing blow, delivered not because he _wanted_ to strike Sherlock, but because Sherlock _asked_ him to. How she envied him the gun at his head, that Sherlock had deduced the combination of the safe to save John Watson.

John Watson. So easy to overlook him in a room full of Sherlock.

And yet –

Arguably, the most dangerous.

And that means a lot, coming from her.

Oh, Sherlock Holmes doesn’t yet understand John Watson. Doesn’t know, as she does, to look beneath the surface of the surface. He knows what he must, sees what he will – that he will lead, and John will follow. That he covers the room, and John covers his back.

Believes, for now, that this defines a friend.

A man who never considered having a friend has never considered more.

And yes, John Watson has much, much more to teach him. Pity she won't be around to offer instruction.

She’ll not be here when the gossamer veil lifts, but John Watson will. They’re tethered already, planet and moon fighting the pull of the sun, an odd, inconceivable, inseparable team of one.

Sometimes…sometimes she’d kill to be John Watson.

_Look at us, Sherlock. Look at us both._


	6. Sgt. Sally Donovan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn't hate Sherlock Holmes. Hate is too strong a word.

**Sgt. Sally Donovan**

_Shag-a-lot Holmes._

She pushes the newspaper to the side and runs a hand over her hair.

Impossible. Tripe. Sensationalist shite.

She picks up another. It’s dog-eared and stained with coffee. The boys have been all over it already, sucking up every word, conceding defeat – all bets off now.

_7 Times a Night in Baker Street._

More like seven times in his life, she thinks. If that. Maybe the two of them together – six and a half times for Watson, an almost-but-not-quite for the freak.

She pages through to a photo spread.

_He made me wear the hat._

There’s an inset of Sherlock there, also in that stupid hat. A sidebar article shows a close-up of John Watson, looking like he’s just come from a funeral.

_Trouble in Paradise? Newlywed Blogger Heartbroken over Shooting_

She smiles a bit sadistically. Jesus Christ – there’s always a grain of truth somewhere in these rags. Oh, her opinion of Sherlock Holmes is well-known here. They all think she hates him. She doesn’t. Oh, she doesn’t like him much – at all – but hate isn’t the right word. She resents him. Deeply. The man is unprofessional. Egotistical – no. Not fair. Most everyone in her profession is. But he’s callous and disrespectful. Of how hard she fought to get here. Of what this job means, to the entire department. They have work to do, they’re trained to do it. It’s _work_ , important work, not a game. The game _isn’t_ on, Mr. Holmes. No – they might not get there as fast as he does, given his public school brain isn’t cluttered with trivialities like social niceties and rules and protocol and process and actually having to _drive_ to get somewhere instead of hijacking a motorbike or snapping their fingers to make a cab materialise. No – the freak bounds in, crawls around a bit on the carpet, barking questions, all drama and ridiculous demands, nose to the floor and arse in the air like an emaciated bloodhound. Takes it seriously for the time he’s on the case then goes home and – what? Shags his girlfriend?

No. Sally knows better. She knows what she saw last week.

ooOoo

She is here because Lestrade is here, and Lestrade is here because Sherlock Holmes has been shot.

She’s not surprised. He’s had it coming forever. You can only shake up a hornet’s nest so many times without getting stung. No suspect yet, and it’s not her investigation besides, but the DI called her in and left her here with this disgusting hospital coffee while he’s arguing behind closed doors with the freak’s brother.

She’s supposed to be keeping her eye on Watson. She shakes her head. Why? He’s the last one who’ll bolt before they can question him. He’s holding the same cup of cold coffee he had when Lestrade showed her in here an hour ago.

His face is the colour of ashes, and he’s watching the clock.

His mobile vibrates. He glances at it, ignores it. Moves his eyes back to the clock.

He’d been here hours even before she arrived.

They finally come for him, and he stands in the corner of the room listening to the surgeon, nodding his head, shaking it, nodding again. He looks grave, but the colour is returning to his colourless face. He follows the surgeon out without considering her at all, and she gets up, and follows.

She flashes her badge at no less than four people as they walk.

Shit.

Sherlock couldn’t possibly look worse. Watson doesn’t seem to notice - ignores the maze of tubes and wires, does not focus on the thin translucent skin and thick medical dressings. He touches the freak’s cheek, leans in, face suffused in guarded relief, says something she can’t hear. She’s kept herself back – respectful in a way Sherlock Holmes would never be. Dislike him she might, but she’ll not be accused of sending him to his maker by being the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes.

But Watson has both hands on Sherlock’s face now, and he leans in again, touches their foreheads together, then kisses him.

She observes the intimacy, professionally detached.

The briefest press of lips on lips, then a no-less-intimate kiss to the corner of his eye.

She doesn’t know what he says then, doesn’t care to, really. Perhaps it’s something he’s never done, always wanted to do, and those long hours waiting have given him the courage and desperation to act. 

She was wrong about Sherlock with the Moriarty mess. And she’s wrong again.

She thought no one could love him.

A half-sincere smile twists her face as she thinks of the just-married John Watson, the almost-murdered Sherlock Holmes.

_Too little,_ she thinks. _Too late._


	7. Mycroft

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft visits 221B two weeks after the fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft has asked for a part 2. Jim would like him to wait a bit.

ooOoo

**Mycroft**

Mycroft has a key to 221B. It fits into the lock smoothly, turns quietly, retracts soundlessly. He is respectful, wearing the guise of grief, still shell-shocked a mere two weeks after his brother’s demise.

The mask drops as the door closes behind him. Mrs. Hudson is away for the weekend. As for John – well, John is gone.

He’s been to 221B only once since that day, spent forty-seven minutes here gathering his things. Three military duffels, a faux leather garment bag and five packing boxes made up the entirety of the material objects that define him, all stowed neatly in a single cab. He’s rejected offers from a half dozen people and is holed up in a mediocre hotel. He’s taken down his blog but hasn’t deleted it, put in for a leave of absence from his job but hasn’t resigned. Made an appointment with his old therapist, skipped it, made another, will likely skip that one too.

Mycroft stands in the middle of the sitting room, eyes the mishmash of furnishings with distaste. He’ll have Mrs. Hudson clean, dispose of the perishables, give her a cheque for a year’s rent. He’s already told her he’ll need time to go through everything, and she’s oh so happy about that, hoping, she admits, that John will take the flat again once some time has passed and he’s made his peace.

There’s a list in Mycroft’s pocket – written in his brother’s hand. The items from the flat he’d like to have now, a few things to destroy, a few more to put safely away. He’d like the deerstalker destroyed, so Mycroft will, of course, preserve it. The violin is to stay here – untouched – thus Mycroft will have it stored in an appropriate facility with temperature and humidity control. He’s not to touch the skull either, but the skull is missing in action, though Mycroft thinks he knows where it’s gone. Better, he thinks, for John to converse with a dead man than a ghost.

He chuckles at that thought, as only Mycroft can. As if no one else in the world could possibly understand the joke.

He walks slowly from room to room, hands clasped behind his back, observing the detritus of his brother’s disorderly life in the muted half-light of early evening.

Sherlock expects John to remain here, in this mausoleum of Sherlock, this museum of the mentally unfit. Mycroft is to tell John that Sherlock would want him to stay, to bequeath him the possessions that Sherlock here amassed and abandoned.

His brother is brilliant. He observes. He deduces. He understands human nature. But he does not understand _people._

His brother is delusional. He thinks John will remain here, keep his home here. Here, where the memory of Sherlock is nearly palpable, where he lingers in shadows and echoes, where the curtains move in the breeze like his coat in the wind. John will remain and work through his grief and Sherlock will dismantle Moriarty’s web – alone – then return in a blaze of glory and life will continue, just as it was.

Pathetic.

That ridiculous tombstone. A traditional burial – no cremation for Sherlock Holmes. A black granite marker in a pleasant churchyard so John - _John_ \- will have a place to mourn, to deal with the tragedy, to make his peace, and go on to curate Sherlock’s collection of clients and cases.

Mycroft is in Sherlock’s bedroom now. He pulls the list from his pocket, studies it, then opens the second dresser drawer. He pulls out a caramel brown jumper, holds it up with thumb and forefinger distastefully. He checks the list, shakes his head. This one’s on the keep list. He was rather hoping to destroy it immediately.

Pity.

Sentiment, dear brother.

_Sentiment._


	8. Mary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary contemplates her future with John as Sherlock leaves at the end of _His Last Vow._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize that opinions vary widely regarding Mary. I tried to take as neutral a stance as I could. Mary loves John. Mary realizes John is a better person when he has Sherlock (at least, she finds him so). Mary knows that the prospects for her happiness with John are severely compromised with a Sherlock who is absent from John's life.

**Mary**

Everything falls apart just as it begins to fall together.

Mary Morstan Watson has never been so happy. She has never been so miserable. 

Charles Augustus Magnussen is dead.

Sherlock Holmes is leaving –leaving 221B, leaving London, leaving their lives.

And John – John’s sleep is disturbed by nightmares.

John is silent as they drive to the airport. He stares out the window, mind far away, one hand in his lap, the other gripping the seat belt across his chest. He is in another place, another time. Living another life altogether. 

While she is irrefutably relieved that Magnussen is dead, she is shaken, deeply shaken, that it is Sherlock Holmes who killed him.

Appropriate, given that Sherlock took the bullet she meant for Magnussen. But murder is not Sherlock’s game.

_The game is over, Sherlock._

She glances at John, keeping an eye on the road. 

Sherlock has done this for John. For them. He believes he’s honoured the vow he made them on their wedding day. Because John chose her. Because John loved her - _loves_ her. Because he loves John.

Yet he has miscalculated terribly, has omitted a critical value in the equation that puts the whole thing off balance.

_John loves him._

And John has already lost him once.

She fell in love with that John – the John who’d lost Sherlock, who’d finally begun to come to terms with that loss. She loved him all the more with Sherlock back in his life. John was twice the man she’d grown to love when he was with Sherlock, when the alluring edge of the grim and sordid underbelly of London nudged him out of his chair, onto his feet, off on a run with a tire iron in his trouser pocket. 

But can their love –tested already just beyond measure – survive the loss of the third? 

She thinks not.

She knows not. It’s a miracle they are even speaking again, a miracle spun by the skilled hands of Sherlock Holmes, who knows not what he has wrought. Who is only now, midway through his lost boy life, beginning to understand love. 

From this day forward, when John looks at her, he will see the woman who took Sherlock away. A fitting final bow after these long, long months when he saw the woman who _almost_ killed Sherlock.

He is grappling with it already. 

He is already trying to let one of them (both of them) go.

Their parting script is drafted as John and Sherlock stand facing each other on the tarmac. They are too far apart. She wants to throw them into each other’s arms, compel them by force of will alone to _touch_ for God’s sake. _Touch._

She is no romantic, but she knows John never looks at her like he is looking at Sherlock.

They touch at last – a handshake standing in for a final embrace – then step away from each other, and her doom is sealed.

She feels the pulse of John’s pain as they stand together, hand in hand, as the plane lifts off. 

_Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning._

She smells sorrow in the air, tastes tears in the breeze. She sees the gathering clouds, hears the traitorous whisper of the cool east wind. 

_Unworthy._

_Unworthy._

_Unworthy…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From _His Last Vow_ :
> 
> _Sherlock_ : It’s a story my brother told me when we were kids. The east wind - this terrifying force that lays waste to all in its path. It seeks out the unworthy and plucks them from the earth. That was generally me.  
>  _John:_ Nice.  
>  _Sherlock:_ He was a rubbish big brother.


	9. Janine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Janine gives her perspective on Sherlock as a boyfriend, and what he really wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes Yes Yes. I'm still avoiding Jim. He'll have his say soon as I'm running out of characters. Jim, Anderson, maybe Angelo? Father Holmes? Am I missing any other likely suspects?

ooOoo

**Janine**

She is moving to Sussex, and the cottage does have hives. It wasn’t all lies.

She’s keeping them, on course. She has money now to hire someone to tend them, though she just might know enough already to mind them herself. She’s curious to peek inside the hive boxes, actually, and see this micro-society Sherlock was so keen on. She half-expects the bees to have tiny little hats identifying them as guards or nursemaids or housekeepers. A cartoon-like code. Beekeeping 101. They’d watched a documentary about bees on the telly on her first overnight at 221B. They’d been nestled together on the sofa – fully clothed, of course – and he’d rested his head on her shoulder, correcting the script and adding his own commentary, and had fallen asleep somewhere between wax moths and wax beetles. He was so peaceful lying there, like he hadn't been sleeping well and found comfort enough in the mere presence of another.

She’d known, going into it, whatever _it_ was, that Sherlock wouldn’t be like any boyfriend she’d ever had. She’d thought she could change him. Of course she did. He'd been the one to ring her up after all, even though she now sees the entire thing was too by-the-book and rehearsed to be real.

Still, she’d wanted to believe, and she’d been flattered. Flattered that she’d been the one to somehow break through that repressed sexuality, after shamelessly flirting with him – clearly the real star of the show – at the wedding. Mary and John were lovely, even when John flubbed the vows and stumbled over Mary’s name, but she’d already had her eyes on Sherlock, who was staring a hole through the back of John’s head, mouthing the words with him. 

_I, John Hamish Watson…._

Christ, he wore that morning suit well. 

She sighs, shakes her head and twirls a deerstalker – near twin to Sherlock’s – on her hand. She’d bought it for the tell-all. She’d never actually worn one before, or course, but it had been an apropos prop. Not that the papers seemed interested in her providing any tangible proof of her dalliance with the great Sherlock Holmes.

He’d deceived her. Had nearly been killed because of it. She knows she should be a good bit more outranged than she is.

She glances down at one of the newspapers spread out on her table, at a photograph of Sherlock, standing beside John, just outside 221B, amid a crowd of reporters. She touches his mouth, lets a sigh escape. It’s the most perfect shape. And he knows how to use it, doesn’t he?

She laughs. 

Uses it to coerce, to complain, to convince, to cajole.

Words are Sherlock Holmes’ weapon of choice. 

She likes to think she taught him a thing or two. An appreciation for the female body, perhaps? Had he ever seen a woman naked before she dropped her towel in his bedroom and reached for his dressing gown? Well, a _living_ woman, anyway? And she’d definitely taught him how to kiss. A technical marvel, he was, with a bit of practice. A fantastic study who’d quickly learned what she liked. 

Yes – but. That’s the thing, isn’t it?

He kissed her like he was practicing for someone else. Never whispered her name. Never let himself go, worshipped her neck, left a mark of any kind. Committing every move to memory, using them again. Scripted kisses, without warmth, without passion.

She resents having been someone’s experiment, but she’d not put it together, really, until just before the end. 

When John had come by that day. When Sherlock had kissed her like that. Like all the practice had been leading up to this single moment, this _performance._

The first time they’d kissed with an audience – he’d certainly not bothered for the landlady or his brother. 

Poor Sherlock. Nearly dead in that hospital bed, desperately in-love with his married best friend, and now the sex king of Baker Street to boot, Mr. Shag-a-lot Sherlock (they’d botched that quote, hadn’t they?).

She might have guessed it after her first time over. She’d been at her seductive best, relaxing on that ratty chair, legs pulled up on the cushion, bent to show as much skin as possible, drinking a glass of red wine and licking the taste off her lips. He’d sat across from her, hands steepled, fighting – she thought – to _not_ say whatever was on his mind. Staring at her, discomfited. She’d parted her legs a bit more, smiled and bit her lip. _Invited_ him to speak his mind. When she’d excused herself to the loo, he’d moved to the sofa when she returned, and taken both their wine glasses with him.

The next time she came round, the chair was gone.

She’d shrugged it off. She’d likely get more action on the sofa anyway. But wasn’t it strange that he’d left only one other comfortable chair in the flat?

She doesn’t know what will come of Sherlock. They’ve had their parting now. He used her, she used him, and honestly, she’s come out the better, hasn’t she? 

She thinks of the look on John’s face when she’d come round the first time to see Sherlock in hospital, the missing chair in the flat, that perfectly lovely snog in the corridor when John was in the sitting room, alternately gaping at them and wondering where his chair had gone. 

A pathetic comedy, really. Four actors on a well-worn stage. Bride. Groom. Maid of honour. Best Man.

And the only one who’d got what she wanted, in the end, was Mary.


	10. Mike

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike was there the day Sherlock fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So - Mike appears in one episode, and is mentioned in two more. Not a lot to go on, but I gave his role a bit of a boost by his potential presence at Bart's the day Sherlock fell. 
> 
> And thanks for all the suggestions on which characters to write. Lots of good ideas! I'm still reading the transcript of a couple episodes to get a better feel for Moriarty. Lots of reading for an 800 word chapter!

ooOoo

**Mike**

To this day, Mike doesn’t know if he did a good thing – or a bad thing – when he introduced John Watson to Sherlock Holmes.

He’ll take the blame, or the credit, whichever way it goes. Even now. Now that Sherlock is dead and John is floundering.

He used to see them from time to time – how could he not with him teaching at Bart’s and Sherlock and John spending as much time as they did here? And he followed John’s blog – left comments on most every case. Funny quips, tongue-in-cheek. He liked John. Always had. They’d go for a pint now and again, and two or three times Sherlock had joined them. Oh - not for a pint or for Mike’s company. When Sherlock showed up with John, it always seemed that they’d been in the middle of a conversation when it was time for John to leave to meet Mike, and he’d tag along, talking at him single-mindedly even as John greeted Mike and slid into the booth across from him.

He’d run into John a month ago, in fact, at the pub where they used to meet. It was a Sunday afternoon, and John was alone, watching rugby, nursing a pint. Mike had abandoned his brother-in-law and joined John without invitation. Set his pint glass on the table and pulled out a chair. He didn’t have to ask how John was doing. He looked awful, like he hadn’t slept much since Sherlock had died nearly two months before. He needed a shave – and a haircut. He sat rigidly, giving a stand-offish appearance, like he’d rather be anywhere but here. Undoubtedly, he was forcing himself to do this, to get back into the game of life. But he’d smiled at Mike – albeit tiredly – and seemed glad to see him. They’d had that awkward, fumbling kind of conversation for a bit, John tripping over his words and looking down into his glass more often than at Mike.

And suddenly, John was thanking him. Thanking him for bringing him to Sherlock that day. For introducing them. Telling Mike the past years were the best he’d had – best he’d likely ever have. That it was an honour to have known Sherlock, to have worked with him. That the papers had it wrong –that everyone had it wrong.

Then came a rather uncomfortable silence, and they’d each finished their pints. Then John stood, and gave him a jerky sort of nod, like his movements had lost their fluidity, like he’d had to relearn them all. He’d reached down for the cane beside him, and limped out of the room.

Mike sat there another hour, nursing a pint, thinking about John. And that cane. And Sherlock Holmes.

He’d been at Bart’s that day. The day Sherlock jumped from the roof. No - nothing so dramatic as seeing him plummet past as he was glancing out the window, but still such a horrible mess, the whole thing. And what the papers had done with it – not giving anyone here at the hospital a bit of privacy – cameras in their faces, reporters showing up during student office hours. Even speculation that Holmes had faked the whole thing.

Mike wasn’t buying that at all.

He’d gone down as soon as he heard – maybe twenty minutes, thirty, after it’d happened. Police everywhere. They’d found another body on the roof and the whole place was being locked down. John – bent over in a chair, head in his hands, half-hyperventilating, ignoring both the officer trying to get his statement and the hospital chaplain sitting beside him, totally ineffective at providing him any sort of comfort. Mike thought he’d do a better job of it himself.

But Molly Hooper had slipped into the room before he could move. Her eyes on John, riveted by him. He’d watched her walk forward tentatively, as if the last thing in the world she wanted was for John to see her, but drawn to him, the weight of his crushing sorrow pulling her inexorably forward.

But John _had_ seen her, and he’d immediately struggled to his feet.

At first, it wasn't clear who was comforting whom – but they stood there, wrapped in each others’ arms, for minutes. Christ – it was the most painful thing he’d ever seen, the way John’s fingers had dug into her shoulders, the way she’d patted his back, rubbed circles on it, over and over and over again.

No- Sherlock Holmes was dead. The grief he’d witnessed was real. Sherlock Holmes had certainly been socially oblivious, but he couldn’t pull that kind of farce on the people who loved him the most. Couldn’t and wouldn’t. Didn’t matter if he was pushed, or if he jumped, or what had made him take that last and final step off the roof. 

Dead was dead, wasn't it?


	11. Anderson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philip Anderson contemplates Sherlock and John's reunion, and the truth within the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of trouble with this one - not really ever having paid a lot of attention to Anderson, actually. John's therapist is up next, then some of the other ideas you all have thrown out. Some really good ones - thanks so much!

ooOoo

**Anderson**

Philip Anderson, half-reclined on his over-worn sofa, throws another handful of scribbled notes into the air and watches as they rain down on him like ticker tape. He’s throwing a party for one, a short yet jubilant parade, because Sherlock Holmes is _alive_. Sherlock is alive and has just treated him to a personal visit, and wonder of wonders – let him record the whole thing. He lets out a short, almost-maniacal bark of laughter, then digs his knuckles into his eyes, smile turning itself upside down with the lightning speed of self-doubt.

And even though not-really-dead Sherlock Holmes himself had just walked through his door and explained the whole ruse to him, Anderson _still_ doesn’t know how he did it.

He’s half-inclined to believe him – Sherlock’s explanation is at least plausible, no matter that it would have required a regiment of homeless persons choreographed with military precision to make it work. And _of course_ he was right about Molly Hooper – he throws another handful of note paper fragments into the air in way of celebration – she was a central pillar in his own theory, bungee jumping and passionate kissing aside.

It should be enough that he was right – that Sherlock Holmes is alive, just as Anderson had insisted. But being right – and the DI being wrong – just isn’t enough for him anymore. 

He’s crossed a line somewhere and doesn’t know how to get back to the other side, isn’t convinced he even wants to. It used to be easy – standing on his side of the law, scorning the DI’s go-to ‘consulting’ detective with all the disdain he merited. Despising him, for being unnecessary, and contaminating the crime scene time after time. An outsider, an intruder, unworthy of the attention he inevitably drew. A nuisance, in just about every way that mattered, ignoring professional boundaries, crossing into his personal space where he had no claim, and no interest either, other than to humiliate him. Them.

But somewhere, somehow, Anderson had become – well – perhaps ‘obsessed’ is too strong a word. He’d had an abundance of free time after his suspension, and soon found enough like-minded people on-line to form a little group of sorts. _The Empty Hearse._ People who saw through the farce of Sherlock’s death just as he had, who knew he wasn’t the fraud he’d been painted to be. Other people, who recognized his genius, who believed in him.

Even he saw the irony in it – that he’d become the masthead of a group of people who believed in Sherlock _fucking_ Holmes. 

And this is precisely where everthing had begun to spiral out of control.

No use denying that he loved it, the group, the theories, the satisfaction of knowing he was right, no matter that he’d not been able to get Lestrade to budge. But he’d managed to get around him – his years on the force had taught him a thing or two – and had been _this close_ to getting an exhumation order.

And that, apparently, hadn’t sat well with Dr. John Watson.

At first, he had no idea how the hell he’d got wind of it, but eventually realized Lestrade must have tipped him off. He thought he’d timed it perfectly. He’d waited an entire year after Sherlock disappeared to start the petition process. Had kept a close eye on Watson – he’d moved out of 221B almost immediately, then holed up in a bedsit until, more than six months later, he’d taken a job at a new surgery and found himself a decent flat. He kept up a good act – mourned Sherlock, went to the cemetery, limped around London looking like his mother, best friend, wife and dog had been killed in one fell swoop. And he saw his therapist. Sometimes twice a week. 

Eventually found himself a girlfriend. 

Anderson used to admire him for carrying on the game for so long.

Because – really – how could he _not_ have known? They were practically joined at the hip – Sherlock all energy and adrenaline and Watson at his side, a quiet shadow, but the dangerous kind. Dangerous because people tended to overlook him, distracted by the way Sherlock filled the room, all light and colour and movement and energy, while Watson reclined quietly against the wall, seemingly relaxed but itching to strike. 

So when Anderson opened his door six months ago to find John Watson standing on his doorstep, he should have been prepared.

He was not.

He didn’t even have time to step back before the fist struck.

It was a single, punishing blow, striking lip and cheek and nose. His eye swelled up and stayed closed for the better part of three days, but what stayed with him most wasn’t the pain or the bruising or the blood on the carpet. It was the broken look on Watson’s face, the devastation in his voice.

“Sherlock is dead and buried,” Watson had said, looming over him as he lay there on the floor, curled up and covering his face. “For God’s sake, Anderson, let the poor man rest in peace.”

Fuck but Watson _hadn’t_ known.

And Anderson wonders, lying amidst the wreckage of his Great Wall of Sherlock, what it had taken for Watson to forgive him.

Probably just the sight of him, he decides. John seeing him from the far side of a near-empty cafe – thinking he was seeing things, hallucinating, rubbing his eyes and finding him still there. Sherlock advancing slowly, cautiously. Knowing Watson for the ticking time bomb he was.

Watson standing up, pushing his chair back so quickly that it clattered to the floor. A word on his lips, whispered, disbelieving, triumphant.

_Sherlock!_

Meeting somewhere in the middle in a tight embrace, sizing each other up, embracing again.

He rubs his healed jaw, his no-longer-tender nose, thinking Sherlock Holmes a lucky man for avoiding the iron fist of John Watson.


	12. Ella

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ella is John's therapist, seen in A Study in Pink. This chapter is, I think, my favorite so far. No idea why.

ooOoo

**Ella**

There are two Johns, distinct as summer and winter in London, and they are divided by a swirl of coat, a rush of adrenaline and a step into the clear blue sky.

She saw the first John, several years ago now, coping with an injury that had robbed him of his single, self-appointed purpose in life. To be a doctor and a soldier, to save lives under the most extreme and adverse conditions. 

And there is the other John Watson – John with a purpose, John on the edge, John at his best when his heart is racing and his blood is pumping and he’s holding his breath, blending into a wall, his colourless jumper and steady breath belying the bursts of fireworks in his soul.

She wonders if she did him any good at all, other than helping him work out that living in a bedsit was doing absolutely nothing for his readjustment to civilian life, and suggesting he keep a blog. 

She smiles to herself as she reviews her notes. She supposes she can take credit for that, after all, for what turned out to be one of the most-read blogs in London.

Dr. John Watson, Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, three years in Afghanistan. He’d been seeing her faithfully for several months, working on trust issues, possible PTSD, transition to civilian life.

And then he’d missed an appointment and never rescheduled.

And within the space of a few short months, he had reinvented himself. Reversed course. She followed him in the papers instead of on the couch, read about his exploits with Sherlock Holmes, even saw him on the television news from time to time, looking absolutely ordinary beside the extraordinary figure of his friend and flat mate.

But Ella knows John Watson’s not so very ordinary at all.

It took her very little time to connect the dots. She’d have done so on her own had John continued to see her. He’d found a substitute – a larger than life one, it turned out, and what was recovery, anyway, but finding acceptable substitutes when life strips away the earth under your feet?

And here he is again, the John she’d first known, floundering in quicksand, the earth fluid beneath him, swallowing the self he’d regained, the self so inexorably linked to Sherlock Holmes that he can’t – he just can’t – right himself again. Sherlock is gone, and John is going, and she wants him to see, to understand, that he hasn’t just lost a friend, or a career, a spot of all right in London. Not this time. This time – this time it’s so much more.

They talk about friendship. They talk about trust. Reality and fiction, safety and danger, loss and grief and recovery. Making peace. She suggests a blog. A _private_ blog. 

But when she mentions love, he looks up at her sharply, suspiciously. 

“I didn’t have time for love,” he tells her. “I only had time for Sherlock.”


	13. Harry Watson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John's sister considers a visit she received just before John's wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone requested Harry. We've never actually seen her, but I gave it a go.

ooOoo

Harry Watson

She really should have gone to her brother’s wedding. 

She’d wanted to go, and had intended to, but when the day of the wedding came ‘round, it was all just too much. Too daunting. She wouldn’t know anyone, and she’d only even met Mary that one time, and that hadn’t gone all that well. She’d been over for dinner at John’s place, and Mary had been so gracious, and had asked her to be in the wedding party. But Harry had balked. Panicked. Said she was so sorry but she just couldn’t. Then she’d begun to cry, and reached for her drink with a shaking hand, but it was only water, and John had managed to look both disappointed and disapproving and only a tiny bit sympathetic, and that last just for Mary. Mary had been so nice about it and said she understood, but Harry doesn’t think she really had, not with the way her face had fallen, the way she’d bitten her lip. And Harry had gone into the bathroom to dry her tears and heard John consoling Mary. _I warned you. No – it’s not personal….”_

A wedding – well, it was such a celebration, and there’d be a lovely ceremony with flowers and music and vows, toasts to the bride and groom, dancing even. With their friends, and colleagues. Nothing like her own wedding, a bare bones civil ceremony, and they’d not even had a real party afterwards. Mum and Dad were gone by then, but John had come as he was in-between tours in Afghanistan, and Clara’s mum and brothers. They’d only done dinner out afterwards, but John had given a lovely, heartfelt toast that made her cry. He was so serious about it – wishing them health and happiness and a long life together. Telling everyone that funny story about her imaginary friend Penelope, a circus tight-rope walker with a very bad sense of balance.

So yes – she should have been there, and she’d meant to go, and she was going to do it right, for John. Show him what a dependable, sober Harry Watson looked like. What family out to be.

After all, she’d had a visit from Sherlock Holmes.

He’d knocked on her door three weeks before the wedding, and when she’d opened the door they’d each stood there, unmoving, sizing each other up, until she’d said something like _Well, I suppose you’d better come in then_. 

She sat at a chair at her small kitchen table while Sherlock, after an introduction that went something like _We each know perfectly well who the other is, so let’s dispense with introductions and move right into why I’m here_ , walked about her flat, scrutinizing every square centimeter, and commenced what amounted to lecture, inquisition and a very accurate overview of the last five years of her life. He placed special emphasis on the events of the last month, including a rather messy pub brawl, a night in the drunk tank, and losing her job due to persistent tardiness.

She didn’t bother asking how he knew these things. She read John’s blog, didn’t she?

His rules were clear. This was _John’s_ wedding. _John’s_ day. They had an obligation to _John_. Each and every one of their actions would reflect on _John_. _John_ was her only brother. _John_ wanted her there, but she was to come stone cold sober, in appropriate wedding attire, and not touch a drop of alcohol no matter that champagne would be flowing like water. 

And if she couldn’t commit to this, he said, sitting on the chair opposite her now to deliver this last, important piece, she’d best not come at all. John would eventually forgive her, and perhaps she’d even forgive herself one day.

And before he’d gone, he’d said something curious, something like _I suppose I’ll be seeing you again someday_.

And she’s so wanted to prove him wrong. To get herself together and waltz into the wedding in a pretty dress and new hat, and not worry that she didn’t know anyone and didn’t _have_ anyone, to be happy for John – and Mary. To be there for them – for _him_.

But she couldn’t measure up. She couldn’t make it through such a public event under the terms Sherlock set. She knew it, and while avoidance was a special sort of failure, it was her favorite coping mechanism.

Besides, she’d thought, John would have Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes, his risen-from-the-dead flat mate who was obviously taking his role of best man very seriously. Sherlock Holmes who was astute enough to know she’d not be at the wedding.

Sherlock, who certainly had his own coping mechanisms for dealing with John getting married. 

Complete immersion. Ultimate participation. Control. The man was probably tasting sample wedding cakes and folding napkins.

And he’d managed a thirty-minute visit without a single mention of the bride.

She knew the signs and had she been a stronger person, or a braver one, she’d have challenged Sherlock.

Whose wedding _was_ this, anyway?

She allowed herself a smile as she poured scotch into a glass with a hand that hardly trembled at all.

Not avoidance. Oh no, not avoidance at all.


	14. Angelo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angelo's thoughts on Sherlock and John - during "A Study in Pink."

**Angelo**

Oh, but it’s good to see his Sherlock interested in someone.

His Sherlock doesn’t have friends. He hardly has associates. If he has family, he’s never mentioned them. At least not to Angelo. He has enemies, and he has admirers, and he has a good number of people who owe him – owe him their lives or their freedom. People like him, who were looking at years behind bars ‘til Sherlock delivered them from damnation.

But Sherlock Holmes doesn’t bring those people to Angelo’s restaurant. Doesn’t sit across from them and look at them like he’s looking at this man. 

Most others would say that Sherlock looks bored. That he’s scrutinizing his date like one might look at a piece of steak on a fork, wondering if it’s overcooked or undercooked before you dare to taste it. A Goldilocks sort of problem – too hot, too cold, or just right?

Angelo would swear that Sherlock looks only at the facts, and would never take on a case for anyone because he likes them, or owes them, or feels sentiment of any sort toward them. Still, he knows of plenty of others who have Sherlock Holmes to thank for something. People on the margin, just above London’s seedy underbelly, street-level, eyes cast downward, spying on life through the mirrored surfaces of murky rain puddles.

People that no one really notices, Sherlock Holmes’ ghost army, his network of invisible bodyguards. 

But Sherlock Holmes always - _always_ \- walks alone.

So it’s a surprise for Angelo, but a happy one, when John Watson limps into the restaurant on Sherlock’s heels and slides onto the bench opposite him.

For a man who insists he isn’t Sherlock’s date, this one certainly has eyes for no one else. Uncomfortable denies what Sherlock never denies himself. Hangs on Sherlock’s every word and chases out of here so fast when Sherlock jumps up and leaves that it seems the two of them are strung on the same string, and there’s just enough give on it to allow John the time to clamber to his feet before the door slams in his face.

Angelo is an observer. He needs to be – he’ll not make the best tips, keep his regular customers, unless he’s attentive to them. And he’ll do even better if he anticipates what they want next before they even ask, so he’s sliding in a new basket of bread the moment before they reach for a piece from the empty basket. He’s lucky to have this job with his record, and he’s intent on keeping it, just as he’s going to give Sherlock Holmes the moon on a silver platter, and the courtesy of complying with every little favor he asks.

And while Sherlock didn’t ask for that candle, Angelos’s not wrong about it. He knows he’s not, and they’ll know in time too.

He is unaccountably happy that Sherlock has found someone, and a bit taken aback that this someone seems so ordinary. Ordinary from his hair to his clothes to the beer he drinks and the meal he orders. Angelo does note, however, with a certain satisfaction, that he actually eats his food instead of leaving it as table décor as Sherlock often does. This one notices the food when it’s placed before him, looks appreciative, chews it, swallows it. Good. He’ll need the energy if he’s to be following Sherlock on his cases, and for whatever they get up to afterward.

Especially with that cane of his.

Sherlock, of course, doesn’t eat. He’s fueled by more subtle things – danger and intrigue and by the bright admiration in the other man’s eyes, the other man who is _not his date – not even gay._

Angelo smiles.

Sherlock is no mere mortal, and certainly no mere man. John will learn soon enough that his ordinary rules don’t apply in Sherlock’s world. 

And that cane?

Angelo stands at the window, holding the abandoned cane in one hand as he watches John Watson tear off after Sherlock. Sherlock _wants_ this. Has invited this. The company of another human being who’s not a client and not a case.

Angelo looks at the cane again and gives a bit of a shrug. He tucks it under his arm, and slips quietly back into the kitchen.


	15. Bill Wiggins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bill Wiggins - the Wig - Wiggy - Billy 
> 
> Bill sees through the fuss and realizes Shezza and John are what it's really all about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just not great at vernacular, but gave it a college try for flavor. Hope it sits well enough. This chapter takes place in Molly's lab when they're giving Sherlock (Shezza) the drug test.

ooOoo  
Bill Wiggins

It’s a bit more than odd, this group in the lab at St. Bart’s. Not a typical summer morning for Bill, and clever as he is, he still hasn’t quite put it all together. There’s the woman they’re calling Molly – they’re in her lab and she’s clanging things around, mad as hell, and glaring daggers at Shezza the whole time. They’ve made him piss in a cup – why he can’t even think. They just pulled him out of a drug house and brought him here. What do they expect to find in his piss? 

The kid is here too - looking scared and confused. Not making any fuss – probably glad to have time to come down before they take him home to his mum. 

The couple – now that’s confusing too. John and Mary. Mary and John. Who could’ve possibly come up with more plain Jane names than that? She’s wearing her dressing gown and pajamas and he’s dressed in that creased shirt treating Shezza like he’s something dead the dog dragged in. Not a bit cuddly, those two. Mary says she’ll take care of his arm. They all keep telling him it’s just sprained but it feels like someone’s pounded it with a hammer then danced on it. And honestly, he’s the only one hurt here, and they’re at a hospital, but he seems to be just an afterthought. They’re focused on Shezza – Sherlock, they call him – but it’s not the kind of attention a man would want, is it?

He’s not had anyone pay him that kind of attention in too long to remember.

So Mary starts to wrap up his arm and she must be a doctor or a nurse or something, or used to bandaging up her hoodlum husband, because she’s quick and efficient and knows how to go about the business, even though her attention is on Shezza and her husband and the lab lady the whole time. Then Shezza is getting slapped – ouch. And again – and again – and then John is in his face, and Mary pulls the bandages tight enough to really hurt and he tries to fit it all together and comes up with Shezza being in the middle of some quirky action romance show on the telly, the kind with lots of twists, where he’s probably sleeping with all of them, but none of them know it.

The lab lady’d been in love with him. Clear as day. Not anymore, prob’ly, but Shezza takes her abuse and only gets in one dig there, at the end. That comment about the ring. 

Ah, but the real story is with this John, innit? What kind of bloke charges in like that, all hot and bothered and _itching_ to hurt someone? Little guy, he is, and he does it with no backup –you can’t exactly count his wife in her dressing gown out in the car, can you? And to take someone’s knife like that without a please and thank you? The man’s mental. All this drama over going in after a kid, and in the end it’s really all about Shezza.

And the way they fought in there after John sent the kid out – no need for all that noise, was there? Like a couple of jilted lovers, really – the glaring, the _what the_ fuck _were you thinking?_ He’d known there was something between these two that you couldn’t quite pin down, but what they’d said just now – that put the thing back together for him, didn’t it? He’d nearly told Mary it was her husband that’d done this to him, but thought better of it – hot head that her man was he might break his other arm too - and then John’d thrown out that it was an addict in need of a fix that’d done him like this. And he’d been watching them – Shezza and John – watching them both, and he noticed things – always had. Might’ve made something of himself from it if things hadn’t tipped backwards all the time for him. But they’re staring at each other now, like _that_ , then Shezza as much as says that John’s the addict that needed the fix, and no one else seems to notice at all. 

Billy’s been around his share of addicts. Has his share of addictions himself. Knows that every addict has his story, and plenty of people disappointed in him, and plenty of reasons to quit and plenty more to keep using. You can walk away from the drug, leave it behind, but the pull will always be there when you get a step too close.

He doesn’t know their story, but he knows this: John Watson _is_ an addict. His drug of choice is danger, and Sherlock’s his dealer. He’s been dry for too long but now he’s stepped too close and he’s tipping back in, sliding down that slippery slope and no one here – no one’s throwing him a lifeline. He gets the feeling they like him that way – like him better with a tyre iron in his trousers and that look on his face and bringing Shezza here to piss in a cup. 

And he has a feeling, as they leave, after Shezza gets his number and says he’ll be in touch, that Shezza’s got exactly what he wants today. Like none of this was chance or coincidence. 

And John hauls him outside and the three of them follow, and he can’t help but notice that in the end, it’s Shezza that nabs the cab, and John who scrambles in after him.


	16. Jim Moriarty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim Moriarty on John and Sherlock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim proved very difficult for me, and is the most "major" character I haven't yet covered. I decided to place this chapter rather early in the arc - just after the pool scene (Season 1, Episode 3 and Season 2, Episode 1).

Jim Moriarty

Jim Moriarty slips quietly into the black car and settles onto the backseat, the satisfied smile on his face quickly morphing into something darker, equally dangerous. He tosses his mobile into the air and swipes it up angrily again as it falls downward.

He is Sherlock Holmes turned around backwards and pulled inside out. 

He’s obsessed with Sherlock. More interested in Sherlock Holmes than he’s been interested in anybody, anything, in as long and as far as his memory reaches. He warns Sherlock about interfering even as he adores having him on his tail – just a close step behind and one to the side. He knows Sherlock would be a more worthy opponent if he wasn’t turning his head so often to check for his _sidekick_.

Ah. The sidekick.

So easy to snatch him off the street – Sherlock’s little pet is clearly accustomed to slipping inside dark cars with tinted windows with no protest but a long-suffering sigh. What Sherlock sees in him Jim can’t fathom. There is no explanation – no explanation at all – except for that unfathomable, indefinable _sentiment_.

John Watson had been easy enough to subdue once he understood that Sherlock Holmes would be killed if he resisted. 

So terribly easy to use one against the other. Yes – Watson would be the virgin’s downfall before all was said and done. Such a common, ordinary whelp of a man, so easy to overlook in the presence of the high and mighty. Sherlock Holmes’ Achilles heel.

Jim frowned, face turning cold, hard. John Watson bore watching.

But it had been _worth_ it – worth playing with the odd little man, for the look on Sherlock’s face when John Watson walked into that pool room. Priceless priceless priceless. Shock and disbelief morphing into confusion, betrayal and finally despair as he saw how Jim had dressed up his little playmate, his Johnny-boy. All dressed up – and nowhere, _nowhere_ to go.

Sherlock’s the looker – not John Watson. Rather like Jim himself. So many, many parallels. So much to admire. Lovely long limbs, pale plains of his body, intellect bordering on genius, expensive clothes, expressive eyes.

Eyes drawn to John John Johnny boy. 

Johnny boy who had dared to touch Jim. To _threaten_ him.

Those two. Those _two_. 

He’d expected more of Sherlock Holmes. Had expected that Sherlock Holmes’ weakness would be so much more than a mediocre medical doctor invalided out of Afghanistan. A fawning groupie who lived vicariously through the feats of his famous friend. A wall flower famous only for turning the exploits of his friend (and someday lover) into boring boring boring blog posts with the most unconvincing, ridiculous names.

No, Jim never thought Sherlock Holmes’ weakness would be a _person_ at all.

But this revelation – this startling revelation opened up a world of possibilities to Jim Moriarty. 

Killing a man is easy. People die. That’s what they do – die die die die die. So very easy, so very very _common._ Death is no punishment except to the living who remain behind to mourn them.

Dying is the easy way out.

No one will mourn Jim Moriarty.

But Sherlock will be mourned. And better yet, Sherlock will _mourn_.

Will mourn John Watson. Will mourn his Johnny come lately, his Johnny be good, his Johnny boy.

Look at them now.

A virgin and a straight man. Neither one of them really understanding, really seeing.

But Jim sees. Jim understands.

_Dear Jim._ Dear Jim can _fix_ things.

And he’ll win this, win this without putting a bullet through Sherlock Holmes, without blowing his body to bits. No – he’ll win this by fire.

By burning him.

By burning the _heart_ out of him.

_I have been reliably informed that I don’t have one._

Jim turns his head slowly and stares out the window, looking at everything, at nothing. 

Sherlock Holmes is wrong. He has a heart, and he’s made the damnable mistake of showing Jim Moriarty exactly where he keeps it.


	17. Father Holmes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John's relationship through Sherlock's father's eyes.
> 
> This piece takes place @5 years after the end of HLV.

He didn’t expect ordinary children from his extraordinary wife.

Though he admits he wouldn’t recognize ordinary if it jumped in front of him bare-ass naked save for a barrister’s wig.

He chuckles to himself, packs the tobacco more firmly in the bowl of his pipe, leans back in the wicker chair and studies the sky.

He’s alone now. His wife is having a much-needed lie down and the boys are gone. They’d come to celebrate their mother’s birthday, here at home. They hadn’t all been here since that Christmas when things had gone pear-shaped. How long ago was that now? Five years? Six? Long enough for time to blur the hard lines of that blighted holiday. Long enough for forgiveness to hold and take root.

Long enough for Sherlock and John to get their lives back in order. He chuckles again as he lights his pipe. Long enough for Mycroft to _get_ a life. 

He’d come into his own marriage head over heels in love with his beautiful, brilliant wife. Fatherhood surprised him, coming as it did more than five years into a blissful marriage that wasn’t lacking in anything, and didn’t need children to validate it. He couldn’t quite get a grasp on it at first, but realized soon enough, as he fumbled through nappies and colicky, sleepless nights, that the love he had for his boys’ mother was quite enough to go around. Little bits of her they were, with a few of his own quirks tossed in the mix. And then they were grown, and gone, and it was back to the two of them again, and he felt just a bit guilty that it didn’t bother him much that most of their news about the boys came from the newspapers, or, after a time, from John Watson’s blog. He’d wanted his boys to have their own lives, to find their own happiness, had never once thought to base his own happiness on theirs, or his success in life on a passel of grandchildren.

He was proud of his sons. What father wouldn’t be? But he didn’t know them very well then, did he?

He knows them now, knows them these last few years, anyway. Knows them better through the partners they’ve chosen, and loves them just a little bit more.

It’s Sherlock he’s thinking of now as he puts his pipe to his mouth, Sherlock who’s changed the most. Sherlock who recognizes what he has, and finally understands what it means to have it. 

The parallels between himself and John Watson do not escape his notice.

Oh, it’s not just how they dress, or the way they take their tea, or how they sit in their chairs with the paper every morning, waking up slowly with two cups of tea and the morning news. It’s the less obvious things – they way they read their respective partners. The way they communicate with them without speaking. The quiet lift of an eyebrow. The slight scowl, the barely suppressed smile. The way they gaze at them with that disbelieving look, the look that’s still there on his face after nearly fifty years. _I can hardly believe she’s mine._

He knows how much, how deeply, how wholly he loves his wife.

And when he sees himself in John Watson, he feels more connected to his son than he’s felt since he held him as a sleepy newborn, touched his rosebud mouth with calloused finger, told him with a catch in his voice that he looked just like his mother and wasn’t that a lucky thing? His son is nothing like him, he thinks now, nothing like him at all. He’s the blazing sun to his quiet moon, chaotic entropy to his innate, regimented sense of order. Like John Watson, Sherlock’s father is warmed by the glow of his own private sun, dazzled by the refracted prism of the genius that is gifted him, desperately grateful to have his ordinary life made extraordinary by love.

They’ve certainly had a hard road of it, Sherlock and John, but they fit together like a good book and a rainy day.

He blows a smoke ring into the sky and watches it fade. _Best thing you can do for your children,_ his own dad had told him, _is to love their mother._

He smiles, puts his feet up on the cushioned ottoman, and closes his eyes. That one, he knows, he has covered in spades.


	18. Sarah

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sarah runs into John seven years after the events of "The Blind Banker."

**Dr. Sarah Sawyer**

 

Dr. Sarah Sawyer slides into an empty seat on the carriage, adjusts Hannah on her shoulder, and looks across the aisle into John Watson’s surprised eyes.

She’d recognize him anywhere, recognizes him still, six years – seven – after they parted ways on the tail end of that New Zealand trip back before Sherlock died, before John got married, before they’d gotten themselves plastered all over the news again with … with that woman John loved, that John married. But in the end, it turned out, that love wasn’t enough.

His hair is longer, peppered with grey, and he looks good. Fit. He’s wearing jeans that hug his thighs, a well-cut shirt, leather shoes. She notices his clothing as she never did before, thinks he takes more time with it, thinks he’s finally comfortable not blending in entirely with his surrounds. His eyes widen as he recognizes her, and they move immediately to the toddler sleeping in her arms.

“Sarah.”

He smiles - warm and wide and genuine. She remembers only fleeting, tired, enigmatic smiles from the John she knew before. This smile reaches his eyes as he folds the paper he’d been reading and tucks it in beside him. He leans forward, just slightly. His eyes drift again to the child. “How are you? You’re looking well.”

She smiles back at him. An honest smile – she’s happy to see him after all this time. She nods and says she’s fine, shifts the child again, cradles her against her chest and runs her fingers through the soft auburn curls. Yes, she’s still practicing, pediatrics, mostly. Not married, no, but happy with Hannah’s father three years now. 

And yes, he’s still with Sherlock, thank you. He grins, shakes his head, but not apologetically. Still at 221B. And God, _yes,_ he’s happy. And his eyes say _finally._

_He could have been the one_ , she thinks, as he stands as his stop approaches, then stoops to kiss her cheek. He places a hand softly on her daughter’s head, smiles again, looking at the little girl and through her and backwards in time and Sarah knows it isn’t Hannah he’s seeing at all.

_He could have been the one_ because they got on so well, and there was that spark, enough to kindle a flame. And she wasn’t even turned away completely by the danger – she could hold her own, couldn’t she? – nor even by the strange, maddening, hovering presence of Sherlock Holmes. It could have been _good_ , but it wasn’t to be. Dr. Sarah Sawyer had known who she was, what she wanted, where she was going. 

John Watson – apparently – had not.

John tried – she knows he tried – but Sherlock burned brighter than she did, and what was John if not a moth drawn to the flame?

She touches John’s shoulder, squeezes lightly, smiles wistfully at him as he battles the ghosts of his past, the shadow of a child who wasn’t, the specter of something that might have been love. But as she watches, he shakes it off, conquers the shadows. Love is no longer ethereal. There will be no more wives for John Watson, no more test-runs. He’s found his center in Sherlock and no longer flutters blindly, madly about the flame. 

He leaves her with a smile and crosses the platform, steps quick and confident. The carriage doors close, and the train moves her away into darkness.


	19. Mycroft (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Mycroft described by Father Holmes, newly in a relationship himself, suffers the scrutiny of his brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more after this one!

Mycroft (2)

He’s taken his time getting to this point in his life. Settled. A strange word, really, for all that it entails. Satisfied where he is, with what he has. 

He realizes what they all think – that he’s followed in his brother’s footsteps. That he’s taken a page out of his book. That he’s looked at Sherlock’s life, his missteps, his hard-earned happiness, and found what was missing in his own.

That he’s found his John.

He’s less interested in his job these days, more interested in getting home for dinner. He doesn’t spend too much time prying into what Sherlock and John are getting up to now that they’re gone most weekends and all the coming summer in the country. With the bees. Hives and hives of bees. He’s glad John is humouring Sherlock, perfectly content, he imagines, pulling stingers out of Sherlock’s hands and drizzling honey on his oatmeal. He’s glad Sherlock has a hobby that takes him away from London and his unexpected and unwelcome interest in Mycroft’s life.

As if Sherlock is uniquely qualified to give Mycroft _relationship_ advice, given that he’s managed (against all odds and all reason) to settle into one first.

And John – John seems to take particular delight in it, settling in with that half-amused, half-satisfied look on his face as Sherlock, packing chaotically for that first summer in Sussex, gives Mycroft the names of two establishments where gay men past their prime will blend in discretely, tosses him the business card of a yoga instructor who’ll be happy to help him with his flexibility ( _Mention my name, of course_ ), then pulls a battered book off a shelf and drops it in his brother’s lap.

Mycroft doesn’t write down the names of the clubs, though he is less successful at deleting them from memory, pockets the business card with every intent of disposing of it later, and slides the book aside distastefully with one finger. While the title is, admittedly, engaging, he doesn’t need instruction for this particular facet of his relationship, and frankly, would prefer to persist in the illusion that neither he nor his brother is possessed of sexual inclinations of any sort.

It is difficult to maintain this illusion when Sherlock – obviously for Mycroft’s torment and discomfort and not because he finds John’s physical presence irresistible (plain Jane John, wearing that ubiquitous dirt-coloured jumper and jeans sagging too low on narrow hips) – drops into John’s chair and stretches out with head on one arm, feet over the other. As John is actually in the chair, Sherlock settles his arse comfortably in John’s lap. John shifts. His eyes move to Sherlock’s neck and he swallows, shifts again, then looks across Sherlock’s pristine white shirt and cants his head, unapologetically, at Mycroft.

Mycroft doesn’t want to share anything with Sherlock, least of all his sexuality. He doesn’t want to see John visibly aroused by something as innocuous as Sherlock’s neck. Sherlock has met Mycroft’s every action, his every decision, with a certain degree of disdain. All his life. All their lives. Until now. Until this particular thing happened. Until Mycroft, unaccountably, found himself falling in love, altering his behavior, his life, gradually losing interest in monitoring Sherlock’s life in favour of having his own.

Now Sherlock is interested. He’s always _noticed_ , but until now, he’s dismissed his findings and moved on. 

Fortunately, he’s easily distracted by John – does he _really_ think Mycroft doesn’t notice? – as he cants his hips slowly, pressing up against Sherlock’s arse. 

Sherlock grinds down against John in response. John catches his breath, inhaling quickly, as Sherlock slowly turns his head toward Mycroft, who is on his feet and out the door, umbrella in hand, resolutely ignoring Sherlock’s Cheshire grin.


	20. Billy the Skull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Billy the skull watches the goings on in 221B as the years come and go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it... Thanks to all for the many many kind reviews, the suggestions for character perspectives and the encouragement. You have inspired me to see this to the end. Thank you!

**Billy the Skull**

He’d not asked to be here, not asked to be unearthed, separated from his body, cleaned of the grit and detritus of long years of burial, and perched (unceremoniously) on the mantel. Periodically lifted to be dusted (mind the teeth, please) and occasionally carried about the flat by the tall one, subjected to a run-on monologue interspersed with clever deductions and a fair amount of whinging.

The early years were rarely dull. Comings and going, the introduction of the doctor, the neurotic landlady, intrusions by _umbrella man_ , and _not my division_ and _the woman_. Clients, beggars all, so few managing to elicit the spark in the eye of the great detective. The fights – battles of words and wills, not of arms, between the doctor and the genius. And while the doctor seldom – if ever – won a battle of words, leaving the flat to _get some air_ and slamming the door behind him, he seemed to always have the upper hand, leaving the detective in a royal sulk.

They were a pair, those two. Simmering sexual tension, just beneath the skin, one burning his fingers on the heat of the other. Loud arguments culminating in hours of music, mournful notes from the well-loved violin. He lived for those nights – welcomed the chaos of the days for the evening song – staring with his vacant, hollow eyes at the shadowed silhouette at the window.

Until the silence began.

And continued.

The long silence, silence coated with dust, disturbed only by the scamper of mice, broken now and again by the opening and closing of a door down below in the vestibule, the shuffling of quiet feet from floor to street.

Two years of silence until the tall one returned, and the doctor soon followed, and chaos ensued, and a bevy of paper swans banked through the sitting room. Music, mournful, lamenting, ripped from the very heart of him, and dancing - _dancing_ , the doctor’s face studied and sad, and tears, and blood, drunken laughter, almost touches, then the others, the women, the pretenders. A jigsaw puzzle of ill-fitting pieces, unfinished and frameless.

Time is unmeasured except by stillness and quiet, dust on the mantel, mournful dirges, footsteps on the stairs.

And the door opens, painfully slowly, and the dancing bow pauses, and eyes meet ( _across the empty room_ ). 

The doctor lets fall his heavy bag, stands bravely there with shoulders squared, smiles tentatively as the detective bends to place bow and instrument carefully on the floor.

Then straightens. Half smiles. Walks forward toward the door.

They are stone cold sober.

The doctor is smiling. He is tired, and so very, very glad to be home.

There is a meeting of mind and body. An embrace, more than friends but not yet lovers, hands and arms gripping the other so fiercely, so tightly, that this is no mere hug, no simple joyful reunion. It is a homecoming, a beginning, an acknowledgement of intent.

The detective’s face is buried in the doctor’s neck.

The doctor’s hands work into the detective’s hair.

Someone is laughing, and someone is crying, and no one is letting go of the other.

And it isn’t clear from the vantage point of the mantel who kisses whom, only that they are kissing each other, then the doctor’s back is against the door, and the detective’s knee is pressed between his legs. There is moaning, and hands on the detective’s arse, and sounds not heard in this flat in forever and an eternity. The detective drops to his knees, and the doctor’s hands are in his hair. His head falls back against the door, and his expression is raw, and open, and the sounds escaping his lips are strangled moans, prayerful adulation.

It is the beginning of a new era in 221B – happiness no longer tinged with sorrow, lasting friendship now buoyed by love. And still the people come and go, and still the music plays. 

Soft and low, quietly drifting skyward, a hymn of thanks, a song of jubilation.


End file.
